Cardiomyoplasty is a method of treating congestive heart failure by wrapping the natural heart with skeletal muscle and stimulating that muscle with a "pacemaker"-like device. Use of burst-type stimulators transforms the skeletal muscle cells from slow-twitch, Type I fibers to fast-twitch, Type II fibers more like cardiac muscle cells and makes the transformed fibers capable of sustaining repeated rhythmic contraction with much less fatigue than normal skeletal muscle. However, it takes more than a month for the burst-stimulated skeletal muscle cells to become conditioned and transformed sufficiently to sustain repeated contraction without fatigue. During this time, about 10% of the patients die following myoplasty surgery, because their hearts are too weak to pump sufficiently. Additionally, although cardiomyoplasty has been found to improve cardiac functional class somewhat in surviving patients, mortality with the procedure is very high. About 10% of patients die at surgery, another 10% shortly following surgery, and in total about one third of patients die within a year of surgery. A recent study of long-term survival found 46% mortality after only 2 years.
The present invention provides a method by which the short-term mortality can be greatly reduced, the effectiveness of the skeletal muscle used to aid the heart can be increased, and both long-term survival and hemodynamic function can be improved significantly.